Day 167 – Newhaven to Shoreham-by-Sea: 16.0m: 5.4h

The Bar & Restaurant does the admin for the Greenwich Rooms, but in most other ways is a separate operation. By way of example, it doesn’t open for breakfast. However, having established that the Pantry Café just along the road opens at 8 o’clock, we’ve arranged for a cab to pick us up at 7:15 to take us to Newhaven so that, by the time we’ve walked the almost 3 miles back to Peacehaven, we’ll be able to sit down for brekker at the Pantry. Our cab arrives on time with a driver who is more measured in his approach to the job than his colleague yesterday. He is also a keen walker and is currently in training for a hike around the Hebrides with his brothers later in the year (a project which, disturbingly, seems to be of some interest to John!). He is also in a position to tell us that, in places, the route over the hills from Newhaven to the front at Peacehaven runs very close to the cliff edge which strongly suggests that there will be another early parting of the ways. And having left the cab and climbed up to the fort, an evaluation of the track in front of us confirms this. John and Mike accordingly set off along the track while Ben and Gary try to find their way to a parallel path further inland. This does not prove to be a straightforward task. Various dead ends in a nearby housing estate result in several about turns, and eventually the path is only located by returning to the road leading from Newhaven to the fort. As a result, they arrive at the Pantry nearly half an hour after John and Mike who have had more than enough time to consume their apparently excellent full English. Gary opts for a swift bacon sarnie and a cup of tea but Ben, who has been experiencing a dodgy tummy over the last 36 hours, gives brekker a complete swerve. It's a short walk from the Pantry down to the sea front, and we’re under way again at 9:15. Light rain which has been falling off and on since we left Newhaven is still in the air, along with a fresh breeze coming off the sea. After walking another couple of hundred yards, we cross the meridian back into the western hemisphere. A monument marks the spot, and its location in relation to the Greenwich Rooms makes us realise how close to the meridian we must have been sleeping last night. Indeed, it is only now that the writer has made the connection between the name of our overnight accommodation and the meridian! As we continue along the coast towards Saltdean, there are few gentle climbs and descents which aren’t too close to the cliffs and so we are able to remain a foursome. Eventually, we reach a point where we can take an undercliff path which runs all the way from Rottingdean to Kemptown on the outskirts of Brighton and then, after a climb and short stretch alongside a cliff top road, we rejoin the sea front at Brighton Marina. There had been a possibility that Ben’s daughter Jen, and her boyfriend Nick, would join us somewhere in Brighton or Hove for the remaining few miles to Shoreham. However, ostensibly deterred by the wet weather, they have perhaps sensibly decided to get to Shoreham by a method not involving shanks’ pony and to meet us in a pub near the station which has now been identified as the Buckingham Arms. In fact, although we’ve continued to encounter a few squally showers since leaving Peacehaven, the rain has stopped as we go through Brighton and it remains dry for the rest of the day’s walk. Our route continues along the sea front through Hove until, just before Portslade, we reach a narrow peninsula running between the River Adur and the sea, and which is the home of a number of steel, timber and other depots of businesses which use the services of Shoreham Port. I don’t believe that any of us had previously been aware of Shoreham Port, let alone the apparent size of the operation there. We walk for about a mile and a half along a road through the peninsula and the various depots to our right stretch for almost the entire length of the road. At the end of the road we cross to the north side of the river via two sets of lock gates. There’s a short wait at the second set to allow a small vessel to pass through into the river basin, but we then reach Southwick and, from there, have a 30 minute walk alongside the A259 to get to the centre of Shoreham. It’s only about a quarter of a mile from our finishing point to Shoreham station. We arrive at the Buckingham Arms at 1:45 and are joined a few minutes later by Jen and Nick. After two pints of Harvey’s, John, Mike and Gary leave to catch a train back to London, whilst Ben (whose tummy now seems to be in better shape) lingers for another hour with Jen and Nick. Despite this, and then travelling solo on a later train, he reportedly does not fall asleep on the journey home.